Monday, November 24, 2008

In a crowded market square in India, a young man sits under a tree and eyes his car in the fading dusk. He then gets into the driver’s seat, puts the car into gear and drives it straight into a wall. With a devilish grin, he shifts into reverse and drives the car full forced into an opposing wall.

Next, he sits an elephant down on the front hood of the car, flattening it and crushing the headlights. He produces a sledge hammer and starts pounding the car’s body. Then came a hammer and chisel. The glow of a blow torch accompanies him into the night.

Dawn saw him, again, looking at his car. He holds a magazine centerfold up at an arm’s length, compares it to the car and smiles with satisfaction. Later in the evening, he drives the car down the street, windows down and radio blaring. He eyes a beautiful lady by the road who returned his advances with a seductive glance.

This is the commercial for the Supermini Peugeot 206, released in 1998. The young man was trying to mould his old model Ford into the newly released model that he saw in the magazine centrefold.

The jocular portrayal of this young man’s obsession in acquiring the new Peugeot 206 - by hook or by crook - is novel. However, the obsession itself depicts society’s attachment to automobile that, according to Dr. Ken Paradis, verges on the ridiculous.

An English professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, Dr. Paradis deals with the way cars are ‘fetishized’ through popular media in some of his lectures. ‘Basically a car is just a piece of metal that gets you from place to place,’ he says, ‘it’s popular culture that layers these values on them.’

He says, ‘Popular culture is about making images seem valuable…and cars are a primary part of [that].’ According to him, the way cars are portrayed gives people the false sense that they can express themselves through their cars, attributing to the cars a ‘fetish value’.

So, what triggered this bond between cars and their owners? According to Dr. Paradis, it’s an historical factor. ‘Prior to the 1940’s, almost all of built environment in North America is walkable,’ he says. Now, however, one needs a car in order to move around, ‘especially,’ adds Dr. Paradis, ‘in the suburbs.’

When a car is a necessity, not owning one indicates that you can’t afford one, and therefore ownership of a car symbolizes income status. According to Dr. Paradis, this is how the car acquired it’s ‘status value’.

Dr. Chris Alksnis, a professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University, agrees that the economy has allowed for this attachment to develop into an obsession. According to her, continued dependence on the car as a mode of transportation has led people to see it as an extension of their personality. However, Dr. Alksnis feels that it is quite natural for people to channel their personalities through their cars. ‘People want to say something about themselves [and] it’s not unnatural to do that,’ she adds, ‘we express ourselves…by the way we dress, the cars we drive.’

Elwood Phillips claims his attachment to his car has a lot to do with nostalgia. ‘I’ve been in cars all my life,’ he declares proudly. As President of the Brantford Kinsman Club, Mr. Phillips organizes the club’s Annual Car Show. He fondly recalls acquiring his first car, a 1932 Ford Coupe, at the age of 14. ‘I used to go all over the country, I used to have a lot of fun with that car,’ he says.

Mr. Phillips now drives a Ford Ranger, ‘It’s my baby,’ he adds. Newer car models, according to Mr. Phillips, are not as easy to customize as old car models - a detriment to him because he says, ‘I like to see customized cars that have been chopped up and channelled.’

Although an avid car enthusiast himself, Mr. Phillips feels that the line between passion and a ridiculous obsession with cars has a fiscal value. In customizing a car, he says, ‘A reasonable amount would be around $10,000 US,’ but he adds, ‘It all depends on how far a person wants to go.’

Despite his affection for his ’32 Ford Coupe, he later traded the car in for a 1957 Ford Racer. When asked about how he was able to dispose of something so sentimentally significant to him, Mr. Phillips explains simply, ‘I had to, I wanted a [Ford] racer.’

Mr. Phillips’ attitude correlates with Dr. Paradis’s observation on the influence of consumer culture towards our behaviour. ‘What we’ve gained is a sense of individual self-definition,’ he says, ‘[where] every individual needs to tell the world who they are by buying things.’

Mr. Phillips‘s view on the matter echoes Dr. Paradis‘s, albeit in much simpler terms; ‘It’s an expression of you; you get known for your style and what you’ve done to your car.’

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Michael Moore’s latest addition to his repertoire of satirical films about the US has caused as many tongues wagging and heads rolling as did his previous cinematic endeavours. Released less than 2 months prior to the 2008 US Presidential elections, Slacker Uprising was strategically placed on the election timeline to swing voters and carried a palpable message - vote the Republicans out of the White House. While the film has somewhat fulfilled its cause of propagating awareness among Americans about their responsibility as voters, some of the issues Moore raised in this film merit further scrutiny.

Throughout his tour to battlefield states, Moore consistently utilised a word to it’s full potential - ‘truth’. He fervently states that his film is not a propaganda. In the film, he chastised the press for letting themselves be used as a tool of propaganda by the government and that the American people would have opposed the US government’s decision to invade Iraq had they been properly and truthfully informed. ‘My movie exists to counter the managed, manufactured news which is essentially a propaganda arm of the Bush administration. My movies are the anti-propaganda,’ says Moore. This statement in and by itself is problematic. Slacker Uprising’s main objective was to influence public opinion, specifically from being for the Republicans to being against them. Propaganda, by the definition given by Britannica Online, is exactly what Moore is spreading through Slacker Uprising. In other words, Moore is running a campaign of his own, just like the politicos he is criticizing. The only distinction here being his approach - non rhetorical and aimed at middle America at the grass roots level.

During an interview about Slacker Uprising on Larry King Live, Moore summarized the 2008 presidential race as ‘Obama versus ignorance.’ He theorizes that, while people who vote for Senator McCain may do so out their firm belief in him as a leader, a large number of people will vote for the Senator out of ignorance. What Moore is directly implying here is consistent with his stand conspicuous in the film - that the US public has been kept in the dark about matters of war, economy, healthcare and others. However, the undertone of that statement and, most obviously, the movie, connotes that followers of the Republican camp are largely ignorant. The film was saturated with clips depicting Republican supporters as painfully inarticulate and, despite their admiration for Senator McCain, were unable to even form one coherent sentence of praise. On the other hand, supporters of Moore and his campaign against the Republicans were consistently portrayed as passionate, discerning and articulate about issues that concern the American public. This lop-sided portrayal of sources brings to question Moore’s integrity as a ‘journalist’ - as one who claims to be trying to clear up the ‘misstatements and untruths’ apparently spread by the American national media. His portrayal of Republican supporters can easily be seen as a conveniently ‘managed’ piece of information ‘manufactured’ to support his propaganda.

However, one has to question; is the journalist and the human being that he or she is to be kept separate? If the answer is yes then, how does one go about doing that? Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, exposed herself to a barrage of criticism when she voiced her disappointment in the US government during a public speech. This, despite her clean record of unbiased reporting throughout her career at the Times. Ergo the question - when does the journalist get to voice his or her personal stand? The answer to that hinges upon the context within which the journalist is operating. Michael Moore the concerned, patriotic, somewhat left-wing radical citizen has every right to stand up for his convictions. But, Michael Moore the neo-journalist, illuminator of misstatements and untruths, holds the obligation to disseminate to the public information that is non-partisan and independent of his bias.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

‘A bunch of people at a rich gala’. This was Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s description of those who objected to his proposed $30 million reduction in arts funding several weeks ago. While Canadians initially expressed their support for Mr. Harper’s plan, his vitriol against artists seemed to have been a step in the wrong direction. Opposition party leaders rushed to the scene with alternatives to ‘save’ the arts. Artists, already greatly perturbed over the planned cuts, criticised Mr. Harper for his singling them out as the ‘niche’ crowd. Paladins of the arts such as Margaret Atwood went so far as to publicly repudiate government funding as necessary to its survival.

Across the country there was a widespread shaking of heads regarding the Prime Minister’s narrow definition of the arts. Canadians, as it turns out, have a greater awareness towards art and its tautology to culture. Although Mr. Harper has since backtracked on his proposals, Canadians – artists and non-artists – are still riled up and making noise. So what is it about the arts that merit such concern?

Lorrie Gallant of the Woodlands Cultural Centre which received over $50,000 in government funding in 2007 thinks that art is a vital component of education. ‘Art goes hand-in-hand with education – it’s a total package that must come together,’ says Ms. Gallant. The centre, which focuses on First Nations art and education, relies heavily on the use of art in its classrooms. From her experience as an Education Expansion Officer at the centre, Ms. Gallant firmly believes that art in the classroom is indispensable. Says Ms. Gallant, ‘We absorb more in learning by engaging our sense of touch, our sense of smell, sense of taste – your food is an art. We absorb so much more than compared to just learning from a textbook.’

Dr. Lisa Wood, a professor of English and Contemporary Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, strongly agrees. She regularly uses popular media such as images and films in her class to stimulate discussion amongst her students. Compared to conventional lectures, she finds that they are more comfortable talking about abstract ideas when there was something palpable to refer to. ‘Ideas are ideas,’ she explains, ‘but if they [the students] are not able to relate to those ideas, they become irrelevant.’ Apart from education, Dr. Wood also believes that art plays a vital role in our culture. ‘It’s a sterile world if we don’t pay attention to aesthetics,’ she says.

The First Nations people, like many other cultures, rely on their artwork in defining their cultural identity. Motives in a beadwork, according to Ms. Gallant, can explain the history of the family that made it. She feels that, because the world is growing so fast, different cultures have begun to merge into one. That has made it even more important for First Nations people to hold on to their distinctly unique heritage through the preservation of their art.

For Brad Woods, veteran Storyteller and frontman for The Great Wooden Trio, art has the power to bring people together. He recently organized a ‘house concert’ where he invited his neighbours to a night of music and stories. ‘We drive by their houses in our car every morning and we hardly know them,’ he says. For Brad, the impromptu concert was an example of what his art of storytelling did for his community.

The impact of art in our culture and education varies significantly from one community to the next or even from one individual to another. However, there is no denying the importance of its preservation, as Brad Woods says, ‘There is no substitute for art. If there’s no art, there’s no culture, no community.’

Monday, September 22, 2008

Christened Haley Chiappino, she was born on September 23, 1990 to Italian and Trinidadian parents. This seventeen year old grew up with three step-siblings and a half-sister. Haley admits that her parents' separation is already a norm. Despite a close relationship with her father, she said that they have, in recent years, drifted apart. However, Haley discusses her childhood as a happy one. She kept busy on her school's rugby and ice hockey team and enjoys snowboarding in winter.

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Ontario born and bred, Haley Chiappino is a junior varsity student who boasts a distinct ethnic heritage. ‘I come from a pretty diverse background. My mom is from the Islands and my father is European,’ she said in describing her family.

Her mother hails from Trinidad while her father is an Italian. Born in Oakville on 23 September 1990, this bubbly teenager attended school in her native hometown before going on to high school in nearby Burlington. Her summer job experiences include working as a sales person and waitressing. ‘I like waitressing better,’ she said, because her sociable nature enables her to ‘handle customers with different personalities’.

A proud member of her school’s ice hockey and rugby tem, she claims to be a passionate sportswoman. ‘I’m generally a nice person, but on the ice or field, I’m a big meanie!’ she added. Her athletic escapade extends into winter when she snowboards while her family vacations at the Alpine Ski Club. However, the field and ice are not the only places where she performs with courage and confidence.

In 1993, her parents’ marriage came to an end and young Haley went to live with her mother. ‘I’m perfectly OK with it,’ she answered nonchalantly when asked about her parents’ divorce. She recalls her childhood as being happy and fulfilled. Haley enjoyed a close relationship with her father despite living apart from each other although, she admits, they have grown apart over the years since her father remarried. Nevertheless, she enjoys a balanced and happy family life with her mother, step father, two step siblings and a half sister. She explains how living with separate parents can have its perks. ‘Two Christmases, two birthdays, two thanksgivings, how can you complain!’ she said, laughing.

For this buoyant teenager, it seems that every cloud really does have a silver lining.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Christened Haley Chiappino, she was born on September 23, 1990 to Italian and Trinidadian parents. This seventeen year old grew up with three step-siblings and a half-sister. Haley admits that her parents' separation isn’t a difficult subject. Despite a close relationship with her father, she says that they have, in recent years, drifted apart. However, Haley discusses her childhood as a happy one. She played on her school's rugby and hockey team and in winter she enjoys snowboarding on the slopes.

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300 word version

Ontario born and bred, Haley Chiappino is a junior varsity student who boasts a diverse ethnic background. Her mother hails from Trinidad and her father is an Italian. Born on 23 September 1990 in Oakville, Ontario, this bubbly teenager attended school in her native hometown before going on to high school in nearby Burlington, Ontario. Her summer job experiences include working as a sales person at an Aldo Shoes outlet and waitressing at the Montfort restaurant. ‘I like waitressing better,’ she says, because her sociable nature enables her to ‘handle’ customers with different personalities. She claims to be a passionate sportswoman and was a proud member of her school’s ice hockey and rugby team. In winter, while her family vacations at the Alpine Ski Club, she braves the slopes and goes snowboarding. However, the sports arena is not the only place where she performs with courage and confidence.

In 1993, her parents’ marriage came to an end and 3-year-old Haley went to live with her mother. ‘Oh, I’m perfectly OK with it,’ she answers with a wave and a shrug when asked whether or not her parents’ divorce was a sensitive topic. She explains how living with separate parents can have its perks – ‘two Christmases, two birthdays, and twice as many presents!’ she says with a laugh. She recalls her childhood as a happy one, where she enjoyed a close relationship with her father despite living apart from each other. Haley admits that they have grown apart over the years since her father remarried and had a family of his own. Nevertheless, she enjoys a balanced and happy family life with her mother, step father, two step siblings and a half sister. It seems that, whatever the crisis, there is no love lost for this upbeat teenager!

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Malaysian-born and Toronto-based budding journalist, social justice advocate and avid Tweeter. I think I'm a pretty good writer, although I've had my moments of doubt. I invite you to read my sporadic bursts of rumination and judge for yourself.
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